Posted on 09/09/2003 8:04:18 AM PDT by jgrubbs
The RIAA has nailed one of the most prolific file-traders in the U.S., filing a lawsuit against 12-year-old Brianna LaHara.
When not at the playground with her friends, "Biggie Brianna" is trading music files from her home in New York. The little girl received one of the 261 lawsuits filed by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) on Monday, according to the New York Post. She may look like a sweet and innocent child, but the RIAA says it's only going after major copyright violators at the moment. So you make the call.
"I got really scared. My stomach is all turning," Brianna told the Post. "I thought it was OK to download music because my mom paid a service fee for it. Out of all people, why did they pick me?"
It turns out that Brianna's mum paid a $29.99 service charge to KaZaA for the company's music service. Brianna, however, thought this meant she could download songs at will. How naive!
When reporters charged into Brianna's home, she was helping her brother with some homework. She is an honors student at St. Gregory the Great school.
Brianna could face charges of up to $150,000 per infringed song. but we have a feeling this might be a tad unrealistic. We suggest the RIAA take all of her toys instead.
"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a statement. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action."
Go get her, Cary.
What is so insane about it? If you go to a store and buy a pair of jeans, put it in the car and walk back into the store and use the same receipt to walk out with another pair of jeans that is stealing. When you pay for one of something, you have the right to that one, not multiple copies of it. Whether or not you think it is enforceable is irrelevant. Making copies for others so that only one copy is purchased but several users now have the product is stealing.
I do not understand why so many FReepers buy into the democrat style argument that it's OK to steal from the rich recording industry corporate fat-cats.
At any rate, they will get a backlash, lack of care in selecting their targets ensures that. It would have been much better for them to find some wild-eyed computer "crackers" who the public cannot sympathize with as well as they can with a 12 year old girl.
Sort of like that anti-shoplifting plan that so many merchants have called "jail your customer". (That is, if you consider shoplifters who walk off with your merchandise but never pay for it to be "customers")
And no one uploads music to these sites out of the goodness of their hearts. They reasonably expect that the site will attract others who do the same so they can download music which doesn't belong to them.
That is not economics. That is special pleading for a special interest group with deep pockets and political clout.
Intellectual property rights? Fine. To a point! Let's not overvalue by government diktat property that unquestionably has lost value due to the development of new technology. When the automobile came along no one credibly argued that stable hands should continue to collect fees for the upkeep of horse stables. Members of the RIAA are the stable hands of our time.
Sorry I can't help you with the specific statute.
This jerk is NOT living up to his namesake. ;)
Not entirely. While you and I don't physically see and touch the electrons on the storage media that make up the file, it is still a file taking up space on a tangible piece of equipment (CD, zip drive, hard drive, server, etc.). The purchase of a copy of the file entitles you to that copy of the file; reproducing the file to "share" other copies of it is the same as taking multiple units of something but only paying for one unit. My original analogy would have been better if I had said "cart out all the ice cream you can take but only pay for one carton...".
Really? Care to cite under what ruling this was conclusively proven to fall under "fair use"?
This is not merely a cut-and-dried property rights issue--the recording industry and the artists do not agree on this. But ultimately the greater issue is that the music industry is set up to lose one shipload of money by jailing potential customers rather than providing a market-friendly solution. They are a "victim" of their own ossificated standards. Their music sucks, they provide the public with the same Britney Spears crap, and when music is available that people want to listen to, they don't provide the market means to sell it. Movie industry had the same fit of apoplexy with the advent of video, with initial hostility until they eventually realized that it could provide them with a new revenue stream.
But since you don't believe in the free market, I don't expect you to believe this either.
Free markets value and protect property rights. If you claim that my support for property rights in the area of intellectual property means I don't believe in the free market, then you don't know anything about free markets. Advocacy of copyright theft is not advocacy of free markets.
I don't file and cite rulings like an attorney presenting a case in court. The example I gave was one of several possible examples of either the "library book principle" or the "backup copy" principle that are often cited in copyright discussions. It also follows an alternative medium principle (though I don't recall the exact term used) that goes back to the days of vinyl phonograph records and 8-track tapes, and copies made on cassette for listening on an alternate medium. The principle is that the person who purchased the item on the original medium could make a copy for use on the other medium for his own personal use, but when one was in use the other was not. In other words, I'm not listening to my cassette while I have given the phonograph record or 8-track tape to a friend who could also be listening to it.
The logic of the principle is that I shouldn't have to buy two copies just to be able to listen to it in two different places (my home vs my car), so I could record it on the alternative media for my own use provided I had purchased my original copy AND I retained that copy rather than giving it to someone else.
I consider music to be intangible, it is only the means by which it is stored that is tangible.
"My original analogy would have been better if I had said "cart out all the ice cream you can take but only pay for one carton..."
Your original analogy would have been better if you used an Ansel Adams photograph as an example where by modern technical equipment is used to make near exact reproductions that are then used by individuals other than the original owner. In photo's as in music there is one legitimate purchase. Its only when reproductions are made that the dispute begins. The ice cream analogy begins melting as soon as it leaves the frozen foods section.
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